BiblioVault - Books about Business

J. B. Hunt

The Long Haul to Success

Marvin Schwartz

University of Arkansas Press, 1992

In J. B. Hunt: The Long Haul to Success, Marvin Schwartz chronicles the remarkable achievements of Johnnie Bryan Hunt, a man who, in Schwartz’s words, “embodies the American rags-to-riches fable in its most engaging personification.” Hunt’s corporate strategies, entrepreneurism, and spiritual convictions come to light in this account of a small Arkansas business that grew to become the largest trucking company in the nation.

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John C. Brown of Tennessee

Rebel, Redeemer, and Railroader

Sam D. Elliott

University of Tennessee Press, 2017

John Calvin Brown was a Confederate general, Tennessee politician, railroad executive, and lawyer, and yet he is little known to today’s Americans. He left behind few personal papers and died relatively young despite his remarkably productive life, leaving his voice silent while historical debate raged over events in which he was a significant player.

John C. Brown of Tennessee is the first full-scale biography of this understudied figure. Author Sam Davis Elliott’s comprehensive research reveals how Brown rose to the rank of general in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. A five-time wounded veteran of nearly every one of the army’s battles from Fort Donelson to Franklin, Brown played a unique utility role as a division commander in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. There is a substantial likelihood he was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan after the war, but more well-established is his role as leader in the anti-Brownlow movement that sought to end Radical Reconstruction in Tennessee. He was selected president of the 1870 constitutional convention, which helped lead to his election as governor later that year. After his tumultuous time as governor seeking to resolve economic conflicts that began before the Civil War, he became a railroad executive and industrialist. He had a significant role in the struggle between rival financiers for control of the southern route to the Pacific, and was in the front lines of management on behalf of the Texas and Pacific Railroad during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. His wide-ranging and successful career reflects not only the attributes of Brown’s character, but provides insight into many key events of nineteenth-century America.

John C. Brown of Tennessee fills not only a biographical but a historiographical gap in the literature on the Civil War and Reconstruction in Tennessee and the post-Confederate South.

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John C. Brown of Tennessee

Rebel, Redeemer, and Railroader

Sam D. Elliott

University of Tennessee Press, 2017

John Calvin Brown was a Confederate general, Tennessee politician, railroad executive, and lawyer, and yet he is little known to today’s Americans. He left behind few personal papers and died relatively young despite his remarkably productive life, leaving his voice silent while historical debate raged over events in which he was a significant player.

John C. Brown of Tennessee is the first full-scale biography of this understudied figure. Author Sam Davis Elliott’s comprehensive research reveals how Brown rose to the rank of general in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. A five-time wounded veteran of nearly every one of the army’s battles from Fort Donelson to Franklin, Brown played a unique utility role as a division commander in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign. There is a substantial likelihood he was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan after the war, but more well-established is his role as leader in the anti-Brownlow movement that sought to end Radical Reconstruction in Tennessee. He was selected president of the 1870 constitutional convention, which helped lead to his election as governor later that year. After his tumultuous time as governor seeking to resolve economic conflicts that began before the Civil War, he became a railroad executive and industrialist. He had a significant role in the struggle between rival financiers for control of the southern route to the Pacific, and was in the front lines of management on behalf of the Texas and Pacific Railroad during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. His wide-ranging and successful career reflects not only the attributes of Brown’s character, but provides insight into many key events of nineteenth-century America.

John C. Brown of Tennessee fills not only a biographical but a historiographical gap in the literature on the Civil War and Reconstruction in Tennessee and the post-Confederate South.

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John H. Burdakin and the Grand Trunk Western Railroad

Mary Sharp

Michigan State University Press, 2016

John H. Burdakin and the Grand Trunk Western Railroad provides a look at the principles and personal values that guided John H. Burdakin through a long, successful career as a top manager at three railroads—the Pennsylvania, the Penn Central, and finally the Grand Trunk Western, where he was president of the regional carrier from 1974 to 1986. The book, written from interviews with Burdakin before his death in 2014, gives real-life examples of how Burdakin’s management principles and personal qualities helped him solve labor- management problems, update railroad technology, protect worker safety, and improve employee morale while managing a four thousand–person workforce. It introduces colorful characters who were involved in American railroads, as well as the serious, life-threatening issues that confronted railroads in the last half of the twentieth century in America. This book will provide insights for managers of any business as well as for those seeking to balance a successful career and a rewarding home life.

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John H. Burdakin

Railroader

Don L. Hofsommer

Michigan State University Press, 2015

Genuinely talented and successful managers in any field—business, government, military, academia—are scarce. John Howard Burdakin was a happy exception to the norm. This engaging biography examines Burdakin’s life in the railroad industry—at Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central, and finally at Grand Trunk Corporation—during a tumultuous time in the transportation business and underscores his core principles and how he employed them in the management of people and property. Some contemporary observers may consider Burdakin’s often conservative style as quite out of date, but a more sober assessment reveals that his approach has utility in any time and in any field. An excellent resource for leadership professionals, this study focuses on Burdakin’s career in management, ever stressing his foundational convictions—how he came by them, how he employed those principles as a manager, and how they were understood by those who worked for him or with him. Through teamwork, trust, hard work, honesty, diligence, and integrity, Burdakin would become respected as one of the railroad industry’s brightest guiding lights.

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Joseph Beuys

Claudia Mesch

Reaktion Books, 2017

Joseph Beuys is one of the most important and controversial German artists of the late twentieth century, an artist whose persona and art is so tightly interwoven with Germany’s fascist past—Beuys was, after all, a former soldier in the Third Reich—that he has been a problematic figure for postwar and post-reunification Germany. In illuminating the centrality of trauma and the sustained investigation of the notion of art as the two defining threads in Beuys's life and art, this book offers a critical biography that deepens our understanding of his many works and their contribution.

Claudia Mesch analyzes the aspects of Beuys’s works that have most offended audiences, especially the self-woven legend of redemption that many have felt was a dubious and inappropriate fantasy for a former Nazi soldier to engage. As she argues, however, Beuys’s self-mythology confronted post-traumatic life head on, foregrounding a struggle for psychic recovery. Following Beuys’s exhibitions in the 1970s, she traces how he both expanded the art world beyond the established regional centers and paved the way for future artists interested in activism-as-art. Exploring Beuys’s expansive conceptions of what art is and following him into the realms of science, politics, and spirituality, Mesch ultimately demonstrates the ways that his own myth-making acted as a positive force in the Germany’s postwar reckoning with its past.

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Junctures in Women's Leadership

Business

Hetfield, Lisa

Rutgers University Press, 2016

How have women managed to break through the glass ceiling of the business world, and what management techniques do they employ once they ascend to the upper echelons of power? What difficult situations have these female business leaders faced, and what strategies have they used to resolve those challenges?

Junctures in Women’s Leadership: Business answers these questions by highlighting the professional accomplishments of twelve remarkable women and examining how they responded to critical leadership challenges. Some of the figures profiled in the book are household names, including lifestyle maven Martha Stewart, influential chef Alice Waters, and trailblazing African-American entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker. Others have spent less time in the public eye, such as Johnson & Johnson executive JoAnn Heffernan Heisen, Verizon Senior Vice President Diane McCarthy, Wells Fargo technology leader Avid Modjtabai, Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, inventor Jane ni Dhulchaointigh, engineering firm President Roseline Marston, Calvert Investments President and CEO Barbara Krumsiek, and Merrill Lynch executive Subha Barry. These women, from diverse backgrounds, have played important roles in their respective corporations and many have worked to improve the climate for women in male-dominated industries.

This is a book about women who are leading change in business. Their stories illuminate the ways women are using their power and positions—whether from the middle ranks or the top, whether from within companies or by creating their own companies. Each case study in Junctures in Women’s Leadership: Business includes a compelling and instructive story of how a woman business leader handled a critical juncture or crisis in her career. Not only does the book offer an inspiring composite portrait of women succeeding in the business world, it also provides leadership lessons that will benefit readers regardless of gender.

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